Текст книги "Intruder"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

“Why, nadiin-ji?” he asked.

“Your father the aiji has had visitors.”

“Who was here?” he asked, and the senior servant said, “We are not to discuss it anywhere, young gentleman. May one assist you to dress?”

“Who was here?” he asked Eisi.

“One is truly instructed not to say, young gentleman. There is breakfast. Just now. One has set it on the—”

“ Whois it you serve, nadi?”

It was, deliberately, because he was angry, mani’s sort of tone. The servant looked at him, wide-eyed, and said: “The paidhi-aiji, nandi. He visited. We were not to move. So everything is late this morning. One fears—one fears breakfast is cold.”

Nand’ Bren. Nand’ Bren had been here on business, and he had been ordered to stay in his room.

That was crazy. And Eisi stood there looking upset.

“You are not to tell anyone I asked the reason,” Cajeiri said grimly, and he got out of bed. “Help me dress. Is my aishid awake?”

“Yes,” Eisi said, and hurried to the closet.

He dressed. He heard his aishid stirring about, and Jegari came in, dressed as far as shirtsleeves.

“Everything is late, nandi. We all overslept.”

“My father surely had official business this morning. With the paidhi.”

“There is all that business with your great-grandmother going on.”

“I was part of that,” he said peevishly.

“You were, nandi,” Jegari said, “but your father may have had other business with nand’ Bren.”

“One supposes.” He still did not like being left out. He slipped on the light day-coat Eisi offered him, and they went out, picking up Lucasi and Veijico and Antaro on the way to the sitting room. Eisi had set out breakfast on the modest table that served sometimes as a dining table—it was a disgusting breakfast, since the eggs were cold, there was only mild red sauce with the eggs, none of the green, so someone had made a mistake. The toast was cold.

And there was still a lot of opening and closing of the front door, so something was going on.

Boji screeched, upset. That would bring his father in if that went on. But Boji’s breakfast was late, too, and he was out of sorts. Cajeiri left his breakfast half eaten, went over to the small table, took a raw egg out of their hiding-place, and went to feed the rascal.

He carefully opened the cage. Boji saw the egg and was right by the door, ready to climb up on his arm, where Boji now preferred to sit to eat his eggs. Boji’s funny little face had brightened delightfully when he saw the egg coming, and it made him a lot happier. He enjoyed watching Boji eat: his little tongue was very neat and clever, and he could reduce an egg down to absolutely nothing but clean shell, light as could be, in an amazingly short time. He scratched behind Boji’s ear and got a happy chirr out of him, while Boji held his egg for himself and plied that long tongue cleaning out the egg.

Just as a knock sounded at the door and the door opened nearly simultaneously with the knock. Boji exploded, the eggshell flew, and Boji bounded off the top of the cage and up to a hanging plant, then off for the top of the bookcase and the hanging and on to the tall vase and, Cajeiri saw to his alarm, right for the door, where a fool of a woman stood wide-eyed with the door wide open.

Worse, she yelled and ducked.

Boji shrieked, leaped for the woodwork and sailed right over the servant’s head, right out the door into the hall.

“Get him!” Cajeiri cried, and all four of his bodyguards rushed the door, shoving the woman—one of his mother’s servants—out of the way. The servant lost her balance, rebounded off the table by the door and sent it skidding over the bare tile edge of the room before she fell flat on the tiles by the doorway.

Cajeiri ran past to the hall, but there was no sign of Boji, just Lucasi and Jegari looking about in every direction, and too many doors open. The servant’s door to the sitting room stood open, the door to his father’s office was open, and past that, there was the accommodation and the bath. The door to the further hall and the kitchens and the security station and his mother’s suite was open. Worst, the door right beside his had the servants’ passages, which went even downstairs, if thosedoors should be open. Only the door to the foyer was shut.

It was a disaster. “Why is the servants’ door open?” he asked angrily. “Which way did he go, did you see?”

“One fears he may have gotten to the far hall, nandi,” Jegari said.

Boji had no harness on. No leash.

And it was his fault. His stupidity. He had taken Boji out of the cage without his leash, because Boji would be held by his interest in the egg, and Boji was stronger and trickier than he had ever imagined.

And now Boji was loose somewhere. Even his aishid in immediate pursuit had not been fast enough to see which way he had gone.

“Antaro and Veijico are searching as quietly as possible, nandi,” Lucasi said. “Shall we search?”

“Do,” he said. “Do.” He heard a step behind him, remembered the servant and turned. The servant gave a stiff little bow. “Leave my suite alone, nadi!” he snapped at her. “You are not to open that door.”

“Young gentleman,” the woman protested.

“We have said!” It was mani’s expression, and he used it, spun on his heel and headed for the sitting room servant’s door, the first one. And the sitting room had its otherdoors open on the foyer. And even as he stood there in shock, he heard the front door open and stay open.

He went out to the front hall and the foyer, trying to compose himself, and saw his father’s major d’ receiving mail from someone, with the door standing half open. Neither man looked alarmed.

One could just imaginec

The transaction done, the major d’ closed the door and turned. “Young lord,” the major d’ said. “Your father has requested you not be in the foyer without a bodyguard.”

“And werequest this door not stand open!” he said. “Ever!” And he marched back and shut the doors between the sitting room and the foyer. Shut them hard, one and then the other.

And he had been rude, he knew, and he had been rude to the servant his aishid had knocked down, and he had insulted his father’s major d’, an estimable old man.

And Boji was missing somewhere in a very large apartment.

The woman was still in the hallway when he got back. Cajeiri said to her, quietly and deliberately, “You are not to tell anyone. Anyone! Or you will have me upset with you for the rest of my life!”

The servant looked a little angry. Cajeiri didn’t, at the moment, care, but he thought it good, on mani’s teaching, not to make the woman think she had an enemy. “If I get him back, and if you are discreet, that is all I want, nadi. I shall forgive it. But not if you talk to my mother! Neverif you walk to my mother!”

“Nandi,” the servant objected.

“One does not care if my father himself has told you to report, nadi. You will not talk, or I shall remember it forever, and you will notbe happy!”

“Shall I search for him?”

He drew two quick, deep breaths. “You may search the servants’ hall, quietly, and without attracting attention. If you find doors are open, close them, but remember which doors and report them to my aishid. Above all, do not leave any doors open!”

“Yes, nandi,” the servant said.

“Go,” Cajeiri said, and went, himself, and joined the search at the end of the hall.

Two serious death threats and a warning from the Guild in a single morning was definitely worse than the average day. The news about the dowager’s agreement with the Taisigin Marid had begun to get out.

And there were rumors, Banichi reported as Bren walked the distance to Ilisidi’s apartment, that the agreement was actually between Tabini-aiji and the Marid.

Bet on it, the rumors would swear that various disadvantageous provisions were in the agreement, privately negotiated by the paidhi-aiji. One rumormonger’s private fear went into full-scale distribution as fact as the rumor passed through the usual channels.

“We had better get this agreement signed, nadiin-ji,” Bren said to his aishid, “before they claim we’ve traded the space station into the bargain.”

“The controversy is decidedly warming up,” Tano said.

“And in so few days,” Jago said. “One can never get factsdistributed so quickly.”

The dowager had made room in her schedule—she had not said whose meeting she had moved to accommodate the paidhi-aiji, but Bren suspected Cenedi’s absence and the fact that the dowager was currently attended by two of the lesser-rank bodyguard meant that Cenedi and Nawari were attending some otherwise important meeting in her stead.

As for the information he had brought, he could only forge ahead—not that he wanted to tell the dowager that there was trouble in the aiji’s household, but Ilisidi’s affairs were bumping up against the Ajuri-Atageini feud, and there were reasons. He had thought it over and over, and he had made his decision—he had to tell her, in such a way it did not inflame the situation.

There was the requisite tea service. And afterward, the dowager patiently heard everything he had to say, then waved her ruby-ringed hand dismissively.

“Well, well,” she said, “and well presented, paidhi-aiji. One reads very well between the lines. And one has seen it coming. We have known Damiri-daja from the day she took her first steps, and we are all too well acquainted with the Ajuri-Atageini issue. One was, to be quite honest, never that surprised that the prior lord of Ajuri should die of indigestion. Nor surprised that the new lord of Ajuri has noticed his daughter sitting next to my grandson.” A waggle of fingers that sparked ruby fire. “And Tati-ji has certainly noticed his notice. It hardly surprises him. But—Damiri-daja had a falling-out with Tatiseigi, naturally; she was young and foolish. She had to imagine that her father in Ajuri would be the perfect parent. She went to him—she came flying back again, having found no great solace there. Tatiseigi took her back. And she met my grandson from that standpointcso things became as you have witnessed. She has grown up somewhat suspicious of relatives’ motives. She has been a staunch and stable match for my grandson. But Damiri-daja has always suspected uscshe suspects anyone whose advice to my grandson supercedes her own. And removing her child from her care—but the heir of the aishidi’tat was at risk. I could keep him safe from assassination. I could teach him what he needed to know. I could set the stamp of the Padi Valley conservatives on him, through his great-uncle. Should he lack these advantages? What could she possibly expect of Cajeiri’s father—considering the actions of her own?”

There were times one could both deplore the dowager’s actions—and uneasily understand exactly why she’d done what she’d done by taking over Cajeiri. The result was Cajeiri as Cajeiri was, educated by his politically independent Eastern great-grandmother, the chief power over half the continent, and by Tabini, the very liberal aiji of the Western Association; and in a minor way educated and supported by Tatiseigi, chief of the conservative Padi Valley Association and of the conservative party as a whole. He was notto fall to the influence of a small, ambitious northern clan.

More, he was alive.

“One is sorry for Damiri-daja, aiji-ma, at the very least. And one feels she has been good. And one does not know where to stand, but one fears Lord Ajuri has put Ajuri clan in a very delicate political situation.”

“Unfortunate in the extreme,” Ilisidi said. “We have urged Tati-ji to quiet the quarrel of his clan with the Ajuri, for her sake. But I fear it may get worse, much worse. There are investigations in the Guild, proceeding slowly, carefully, but Ajuri clan is rapidly losing its influence. And one does not believe that the current Lord Ajuri has the skill or the background to weather this, any more than the late Lord Ajuri. Damiri’s choice now to attack us in her resentment over her son is very ill timed– veryill timed. It has the flavor of her father’s sort of shortsightedness and clan-centric thinking, but one supposes she is in an emotional state right now and needs no urging from him to be unreasonable. But one is very suspicious her father is adding fuel to that fire.”

“One has great trepidation even to mention my interceding with her, aiji-ma—”

“Oh, by no means consider doing so, paidhi-ji. If the attempt went badly, it would go badly for everyone involved, and the fact that Cajeiri is strongly devoted to you cannot make you a disinterested party in her sight. One fears you are in fact a special target of her resentment, particularly as the boy’s last adventure landed him at your estate.”

He drew a deep breath. “You are aware, aiji-ma, that Cajeiri-nandi, from the moment of his return to his mother, cited your rules quite strongly in contradiction of his mother’s reprimands.”

“Did he?” Ilisidi said with a lift of her brows. “One will have to have a word with him—not for adherence to my instruction but for the political folly of antagonizing his mother. He acted quite foolishly in doing so. Does that state of affairs continue?”

“One has not had that impression, aiji-ma. One believes it was in the high emotion of being moved into his parents’ household. Being moved out of his chosen surroundings has become a sore point with him. And of course the restrictions of the Bujavid are difficult for anyone. He is rarely allowed out of that apartment. With good reason, of course. But—”

“One perceives it,” Ilisidi said. “I have discussed the matter with him. Intellectually, he understands his situation. But he is a child. A very young child—intermittently.” A sigh. “His father was like that as a boy. A constant surprise. His parents and I found him one day walking on my balcony rail. His parents of course ordered him to come down. He said if they did not permit him to reside the season at Malguri, he would throw himself off the third-story railing. There was quite an argument while he walked up and down the rail. He settled for half the season at Malguri.” A deep sigh. “Tabini knew even at that age that half of what he wanted was better than nothing. He was quite smug about it when he left, and he said of course he would not have fallen because he did not wishto fall, and that he was not a fool, nor should be dealt with as one. In fact he was so obstinate a child, his parents sent him to me fifteen days early.”

“One does see that in Cajeiri.”

“My grandson had to go back to his father, of course, after that season at Malguri,” Ilisidi said. “My grandson learned self-control that summer. I knew he would need it, particularly once he did return. My son, now, Valasi, applied self-control only when he wanted something he could not get by force. He held grudges and was ruthless to persons that ever had opposed him, striking out for no good current reason but for some cause deep in the past. He struck only because that person had ceased to be useful. Wasteful. Wasteful. People feared him. But one never knew what sort of grudge he held. My grandson’s instruction came from me but also from the shadow his father cast. My grandson has no wish to cast such a shadow as that. So he has shaped himself to avoid that trait—sometimes to his own peril. He is at times far too forgiving.” She set down the teacup. “Paidhi-ji, do not repeat these things to my grandson.”

“I shall not, aiji-ma.”

“You know I do not tell secrets idly. Know the temper of my grandson. If he were my son Valasi, Damiri would not have borne a second child. She will. If he were my son Valasi, Damiri would not bring up this child. She will. If he were my son Valasi, Damiri would be in danger for the rest of her life. She will not be, whatever she decides and wherever she resides, unless she takes action against him. And if I am any judge, she will not leave the Bujavid voluntarily—partly because she is stubborn and partly because she is too intelligent to put herself back under her father’s authority. But for the next season at least, she will be unstable. We shall not intervene with this child—unless she instructs this child to oppose Cajeiri. That, of course, we will not overlook. That is the risk we run in this second child. And in this matter we shall see how wise Cajeiri can be. Youwill see. I am not certain how long I shall be at hand to watch over my great-grandson.”

“You are absolutely indestructible, aiji-ma. And your influence over your great-grandson will not change. It is far too well-set in him.”

“For which I shall never be forgiven, one suspects. Even by my great-grandson himself.”

One could not say Cajeiri lovedher, of course. A human had no instinctual comprehension what Cajeiri actually did feel toward his great-grandmother. But whatever Cajeiri felt was powerful and deep.

“His qualities and his intelligence will surely inform him how very much he owes you, aiji-ma. He is no fool, and he is honest.” That word, too, had different connotations among atevi. Maintaining-sensible-relationships-of-mutual-exchange. “One hopes he will become more diplomatically considerate toward his mother as he grows older. And one is equally certain your grandson will always be grateful—” Yet another charged word, about keeping one’s relationships in good repair. “—for your saving the boy—in all senses. Of that one has absolutely no doubt, aiji-ma. Your grandson knew you would do well by the boy. He wanted for his son what he had from you. He walked a railing to get to Malguri. He sent his son to you. That is my opinion.”

“Ha. My grandson knew his own temper could never bring up this boy while he was dealing with Damiri’s crises. There have been storms in the house before this. We have saved Cajeiri from those. We have taught him to ride. We have taught him self-restraint. Had I had his father during his very first years—who knows?” A wave of a black lace handkerchief. “But past is past and done is done. For the future, this second child will have an adequate upbringing, if she is intelligent and personable. But she will not have the care I have taken with my great-grandson. Cajeiri was born under a marriageagreement. I told my grandson at the time that that was foolish—it should have been a mere contract marriage. Then we should have had it clear and specified in writing whose Cajeiri was from the outset. But no, my grandson did not listen. He had found his life partner. Well, now we have a second child under this identical marriage agreement, and again, if it were an ordinary contract marriage, Damiri-daja would not be in such a state, wondering if my grandson would take this child from her, too. She would knowit was hers, were that the stipulation. So she is strongly determined, by what I hear, to claim the rights she was promised and to claim them for the next child, since the elder refuses to respect her. Well, fairly so. I certainly do not fault her for claiming what she was promised. You will have noted a certain impulsiveness in my grandson, as in my great-grandson.” A small flourish of the black lace-edged handkerchief and a flash of rubies. “But you, nand’ paidhi, you have not asked to be burdened with such confidences! You will have enough to do on my behalf in the next few days. The Taisigi representative has sent a message in the last half hour: Machigi is on his way.”

Profound shift of focus. “On his way,aiji-ma!”

“One assumes that since he knows he has an approved residence available to him, he intends to make use of it and get this done, as we have urged him, before there is any greater furor. We couriered a message to him last night. He will lodge in the Taisigi mission and, we presume, is coming here to sign the promised agreement at the earliest.”

Within the hour, that message must have come, just before they entered the dowager’s sitting room. Tano and Algini, on duty out in the hall, undoubtedly had found it out from the dowager’s staff. They had probably sent that information to Banichi and Jago, who were with him. But they had not been able to inform him while he was engaged with the dowager.

“Then I shall inform Lord Geigi, aiji-ma.”

“Do.”

“Shall I attend the signing?”

“Oh, that you shall, nand’ paidhi. You certainly should! And if I can persuade my grandson andLord Machigi, we will have a large attendance—in the lower reception hall, with the news cameras. The news service, we are told, has carried so much rumor about this agreement that truth about it will be news indeed. And once the document is signed, we shall have exhibitions for the participants. I have the library engaged in creating an informative display of maps and books, along with the full text of the document. I have a package ready to go to the television, a tour of the coast in question, interviews in the Eastern village that will become key to the new port. The villages in the East are quite excited. They have just gained a new meeting hall and the prospect of a road linking the three villages along that shore. And a promise of new building, employing locals. It will require minimal dredging, it is in an area of minimal impact on sea life or fisheries, it is all at myexpense, and Lord Geigi has informed us, back at Najida, while you were off visiting Lord Machigi, that there is a technology that can deal with pollution in the waters of the bay, so the local fishery will not suffer. You see, nand’ paidhi, we are not too old to learn new ways.”

“I shall certainly approve it, if it does that.”

“We are quite interested in seeing it applied, not only on the East Coast. You will explain it to my grandson.”

“With the greatest enthusiasm, aiji-ma. I shall need to ask Lord Geigi, clearly.”

“And with this inducement, you, nand’ paidhi, are going to prepare arguments to convince fishermen who need their sons and daughters to follow their trade to let the youngest go to pursue this new technology.”

Preventing technology was easy: ignorance, poverty, and prevalent disease did that very effectively. Directing it by stages was what the paidhi’s office had been established to docwithout disrupting the social structure or ripping the old trades and the old customs away indiscriminately. “One entirely understands the mission, aiji-ma. And I shall take pleasure in it.”

Give or take two death threats in one morning. But he’d had those ever since he’d left off building dictionaries and had begun to build a space program.

So Machigi was coming. No wonder the death threats.

That meant the Guild was shifting things into motion, possibly because of more credible than usual death threats; they hadn’t forewarned his aishid, damn themc

On the other hand, they were in position now to know exactly the state of readiness. The dowager had the documents, he had laid the groundwork with critical committees, Siodi-daja had set the de facto Taisigi trade office near the Bujavid, where Machigi could safely lodge and from which he could safely reach the Bujavid.

And Ilisidi had a notion she was going to set up a media event.

They were in it. The Guild might tweak circumstances. But the event was about to become a juggernaut.

It wasn’t the first time he’d looked at a program he’d launched with Ilisidi and had misgivings.

But this one—

He saw in it a real possibility that he and Ilisidi andTabini could go down, along with the aishidi’tat, if it all blew up.

At very least, the paidhi-aiji might be called upon to take all blame.

God, he hoped this worked.

There was no sign of Boji. Nothing. Cajeiri had stood guard inside the sitting room while Antaro stood guard outside, and Veijico and Lucasi and Jegari had turned over every chair and looked in every vase and moved every heavy item to discover any Boji-sized hole.

“He can get through anything his head can get through,” Jegari said, “and that is a very small hole.”

It was beyond exasperating. “He will need food,” Cajeiri said. “He will need water sooner. What will he do, nadiin-ji? Shall we keep our apartment door ajar?”

“Just a crack would be enough for him,” Jegari said. “He can move the door. They’re quite strong.”

“One knows he is strong, nadi!” Cajeiri said in frustration. “One could not hold him! And he can hide in the smallest space! What have we not thought to search?”

“Any hall beyond any opened door, or any door that may have opened since,” Veijico said unhappily. “Perhaps you should advise your father, Jeri-ji, so he can alert the staff. He can go on moving every time an entry is left unwatched.”

“No,” he said. “We shall not.”He had just gotten permission to invite his associates down from the ship. And that could go away if his father was angry with him. Every good thing could go away, just like that. “We cannot make my father mad, nadiin-ji. Let us try to get him back on our own. He may come back for food and water. Let us set an egg in the cage. With the door open. And then one of us will watch there.”

“There is the bath, nandi,” Lucasi said. “That often has water standing. Or simply condensation. It will smell of water.”

“One of us can watch there,” Jegari said, “even all night. He is most active at twilight. When the house lights are mostly out, then he may come out.”

“We shall do that. Eggs. Fruit. He loves fruit. And we have two servants we can trust, and that woman, who is supposed to be lookingchave you heard from her?”

“She has reported on two doors,” Lucasi said, “which she closed, which are no help.”

“He will not have gone into the office. My father was there. Nor the security station, with people there. Nor the kitchen, too likely—wherever there are people, he will avoid.”

“The closets,” Jegari said. “We should look in the cleaning closets, Jeri-ji, in the servant hallways. He will want dark places. You should stay in the apartment and watch for him to come back, and let us search.”

He was not supposed to be alone. That was his father’s standing order. But he could stand watch all night near Boji’s cage if he had to.

And they would have to. He was not going to have his father forbid his associates again.

It was not even his fault. It was all the servant’s fault.

Except handling Boji without his leash. He had done that, and it was stupid. So he could hardly blame the servant, except for coming into a part of the apartment she had no permission to be in. And that just made him mad. Really mad.

“Nadiin-ji,” he said once they were in the hall again and had Antaro in their midst. “Only two servants were ever supposed to come into our rooms! This was agreed. Whydid this person come in? Go tell Jaidiri that an unauthorized servant came into my room, when we had asked to have only particularservants tend our rooms! And that we wish him to know we want to have it as we ordered!”

Jaidiri was the head of his father’s bodyguard. It was scary to talk about involving Jaidiri in the mess, because things could go immediately to his father. But now that he had thought it through, dealing with it as a security matter seemed a sensible thing to do. Jaidiri would ask his father’s head of staff and find out who had ordered the woman to come into his room, because all the women were his mother’s, and theyhad no right nor reason to be meddling with his room. Jaidiri might mention it to his father in passing, but only as a matter of fact. It was going through channels. His father had constantly told him to go through channels. And he would feel better if he knew why someone else was coming into his apartment.

Lucasi said, smartly, “Yes.”

“Do,” he said, making it an order, and Lucasi went off at that very moment.

“I shall go set up to watch for Boji in the apartment,” he said. “Keep searching.”

They agreed, and he went back to set up with a pen to block the door just slightly open, and have the cage open, with water in the cage, and most of all, just inside the door, an egg.

It was going to be a long wait, and he could not even take his eyes off the door to read. He just had to sit and watch, because Boji was very clever, very quick, and very sneaky. Trapping him was not going to be easy.

  There was no likelihood that the paidhi-aiji was going to have to host a formal dinner for the signing, so Bindanda, who was sending out daily orders for this and that exotic item—mostly staples that had to be gotten from Mospheira, so as not to poison his lord—was not going to have to present a formal service amid everything else that was going on in the household. They did not want to go into the evening’s event with a heavy supper sitting on their stomachs; there was to be a little refreshment at a reception afterward, and the decision on a very light cold supper perfectly suited the kitchen.

“The boy you have engaged to assist me is intelligent and willing, nandi,” Bindanda said, arms tucked tightly across his stout frame, “and there are excellent possibilities in him, but one would not gladly undertake a dinner party as yet with only Pai for help.”

So Bindanda was off the hook and glad of it.

Narani, however, that estimable old man, was not. He had a great deal of work to do, including arranging yet another bulletproof vest—a change in brocade to go with the brown tones as well as the blue and the green—and being sure a young staff had every item of the paidhi’s court wardrobe ready not only for this evening on short notice, but for any of a number of meetings that might follow.

“One begs to urge that you need more shirts, nandi,” Narani informed him. “Five more, at minimum. And more socks. One has made a list, which one would be pleased to send to the usual supplier on Mospheira. And a session with the tailor is in order: We need one more vest, in a modest gray-green. And, nandi, one is certain one remembers the brown coat from beforewe went up to the stationc.”

One had to agree that a new coat or two might be in order. “But the brown coat is my most comfortable, Rani-ji. One wishes to keep it—for quiet, home occasions.”

“It was always an excellent coat, nandi,” Narani said, and one had confidence that his favorite coat would be safe and made as presentable as possible until it simply wore out.

Geigi’s own major d’ and staff were simultaneously working Geigi’s needs into the schedule; his wardrobe and that of his staff had to be in proper form for this evening.